Attaining positional information is becoming faster, easier, and cheaper. Furthermore, positional information may be repeatedly acquired and then collected and stored electronically. More specifically, geographic information systems (GIS) can produce what is called a location history. A location history is a record of an entity's location in geographical space over some interval of time.
Historically, location histories have been reconstructed by archaeologists and historians looking at migrating populations or census takers tracking demographics, at temporal resolutions of decades or centuries and spatial resolutions of tens or hundreds of kilometers. Recent advances in location-aware technology, however, allow the recording of location histories at a dramatically increased resolution. Examples of such location-aware technologies include the global positioning system (GPS), radio triangulation, localization via mobile phones and associated networks, interaction with IEEE 802.11 wireless systems, and monitoring of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. These technologies make it feasible to track individual objects at resolutions of meters in space and seconds in time—in some cases, even greater resolution is possible.
These location-aware technologies along with modern computer storage capabilities enable a huge amount of positional data to be collected into a location history. The resulting location data points that are recorded for the location history can number in the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, or even higher. Unfortunately, although there are a few specific algorithms designed for certain particular applications of location histories, there are no general algorithms or approaches for organizing or otherwise handling this great wealth of location information.
Accordingly, there is a need for general schemes and/or techniques that can manipulate location histories, such as analyzing the location information thereof, modeling the location information thereof, and/or providing applications for using the analyzed or modeled location information.